


Chestnut and Hazel II

by 12XU



Series: Chestnut and Hazel Extended [2]
Category: Maurice - E. M. Forster, Original Work
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Alby’s Blasted Cousin, Beaches, Class Differences, Desire, Edwardian Period, Eventual Romance, Gay Male Character, Heteronormativity, Homoeroticism, Internalized Homophobia, LGBTQ Character, Love at First Sight, M/M, Male Slash, Masturbation, Nature, Osmington, Scudder Family, Seaside, Skinny Dipping, Smut, Solitude, Stealth Crossover, Summer Love, Swimming, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 04:10:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11889717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/12XU/pseuds/12XU
Summary: Chestnut and Hazelcontinued. A story of Edwardian summer love and discovery on the Dorset coast, 1909, centred on Tom, a brilliant but reserved young Oxford student who has long struggled with his sexuality.‘He will find you, and you him – I’m sure of it.’ Unexpected events unfolding on a night out in Weymouth have changed everything for Tom. But what next? For to find – or be found – is not to seek…





	1. Fifth Chapter (in the E. M. Forster sense), or A Bumpy Ride

…Well, not quite floating on air. A hard-sprung saddle, juddering two-cylinder engine and rough country roads are not the ideal companions when dreaming of boys. More than once in my eight-mile ride I ground to a halt in chafing soreness, bone-hard arousal or a chastening confusion of both.

Hoping to gird – or calm – my loins for the switchback ascent to Ringstead and bed, I paused on the main road for a smoke, and was diverted by the sight of a large, eccentrically drawn, white chalk horse on the downs above. Its body and rear legs were sausage-plump, its rider ill-formed, yet the head and forelegs were as graceful as a seahorse; a generous flag of a tail semaphored from its equine arse. In the haste and mood of my ride out, this friendly-faced curiosity had passed me by. Glancing around me in the dark, I decided that the parts of the horse’s native village that reached the main road – contemptibly dull to me earlier – although not picturesque, had some decent vernacular buildings. Beyond the visible, a lane faded into darkness; somewhere in the void, I fancied for a moment that I caught a distant clip-clop of real hooves.

The rest of my ride was a predictable trial of further perversely stimulating bumpy agonies, but eventually I emerged onto the grassy expanse of deserted clifftop plateau that, for now, I could call home. By the last hundred yards, it felt most bearable to dismount and walk, wheeling my lovely but heavy bike beside me down narrowing tracks until I arrived at the gate – my gate! – into the fenced-off copse, and thence to the clearing where my cottage lay. Following my stops and starts and the night’s many adventures, it must have been after midnight. I ached, conscious now of my fatigue and need for rest, yet mentally alert and too elated for sleep. My whole body felt sticky inside my clothes; between that and my saddle-hammered backside and privates, I wondered if a cool shower might be the thing. Accordingly, I threw open the cottage door and racked my boots, jackets and shirt just inside, then returned to the moonlit yard and stripped myself naked, joyously bowling my socks, trousers and smalls through the door and up the stairs only to see them slide amusingly down again.

The cold hard jet from the hose refreshed me, but once I had lathered up (I kept a bar of coal tar tied to the tap) and tended to my tender parts, my ablutions ceased to be calming. The chill water, formidable at first, brought new warmth in its wake, and my sore buttocks, bashed ball-sac and intimate crevices tingled with sensations that were the opposite of numbing – it seemed my saddle-spanking had softened into a pleasurable glow that now spread deep into my crack and perineum. By the time I had dried off with a rough towel I kept in the kitchen outhouse, my blood hammered, and a fever of sensuality swept through me – as if I was back in those other woods, but this time naked, with no censure or danger of discovery to constrain me.

Under the black velvet sky, I surrendered to my own self-stimulations – and fully to my own depravity – for perhaps this, not the preceding cold shower, was what I had truly needed. My prick stood fully engorged without my touch; my balls throbbed heavy, no longer solely from the bike ride. My excitation had been building stealthily the whole way home – and now, I discovered, every discomfort, old or new, served only to exquisitely heighten it. With rough self-handling, the pressure of the water jet and a knotted towel, I found I could bring myself to obscene heights of breathless, thigh-trembling pleasure that stopped short of completion. As my frenzy intensified, it became hard to stay standing unsupported with none but an imaginary lover to hold me. Stumbling – absurdly priapic – into the cottage library, I dragged one of Harry’s unusual side-chairs – flat leather triangles spliced to a smooth metal frame – out into the yard, and for the first time acquainted myself with the versatile uses of the curious design. When straddled in reverse, it lent itself to imperfect frottage against the leather back. Seated more conventionally – and with greater success – I arched back against the chair’s narrowest part, buttocks parted, and writhed my touch-hungry hole like a cat on heat, while my free hand, now shaking unreliably, continued to torment my sluttish, leaking prick.

It is a miracle I did not spend there and then, defiling the chair and myself – but some gentler instinct or emotion intervened. Blood pounding wildly, flushed from my temples to my chest, and wet with heat and excitement everywhere below, I stumbled to my feet and across the warm earth to rest against the reassuring trunk of a tree. Here I closed my eyes, caught my lost breath, and summoned the vision of my hopes and dreams before pumping myself to orgasm – thunderous spasms and many spurts that left me swooning limp against the tree like the first of the boys I had caught sight of earlier.

Sweet reader, I know you may fear by now that my solitary excesses obliterated all tender thoughts and feelings of the bright-eyed, hazel-eyed boy – that in my heart or in my fantasies I defiled and debased him as violently as I excited myself. For where was his sweetness in the extremes of physical pleasure with which I tested and teased my body that night? Yet – strange as it must sound – all the time he was with me in my heart, and my heart did not dishonour him. As I rested against the tree and closed my eyes, I felt his human warmth and saw him vividly, if impressionistically: the bright eyes, the sweet mouth, the radiant good humour. As my crisis came, the worst I can say of myself is that I imagined I was deep in his arms and felt his kisses – while, in contradiction, the same yielding mouth and rough wet tongue had replaced my tired fist around my convulsing prick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My title for Chapter 1 – ‘Fifth Chapter (in the E. M. Forster sense), or A Bumpy Ride’ – does double duty. As well as continuing where Chestnut and Hazel left off, ‘Fifth Chapter’ pays jokey homage to Forster’s ‘Chapter XII: Twelfth Chapter’ of _A Room With A View _, in which Forster withholds a descriptive title from the homoerotic goings-on at the Sacred Lake. It felt appropriate to draw a similarly tongue-in-cheek veil here over Tom’s (*cough*) activities. ;-)__
> 
> __White horses and other chalk figures (such as the famously phallic Cerne Abbas Giant), drawn at a huge scale on hillsides, are a traditional feature of the English landscape, especially on the downs in the south and south-west. The ‘eccentrically drawn’, ‘friendly-faced’ white horse Tom notices on his bumpy ride back to Ringstead is at Osmington, four miles east of Weymouth._ _
> 
> __As readers/fans of Forster’s _Maurice _will spot, Osmington is also the village where Alec Scudder’s father is the butcher. Curiously Forster never indicates Osmington’s extreme closeness to Weymouth, a detail my ficbrain has been amused by for some time...___ _


	2. Boy on a Beach

I awoke to the bright new day contented and utterly rested.

The evidence of my Sunday-morning body and surroundings confirmed that I must have cleaned myself somewhat and got myself up the stairs to immediate, blissful sleep on the couch where I bedded. Last night’s abandoned clothes still lay balled and scattered on the landing and stairs. Smiling, I dealt with them, treated myself to a proper bath, then ventured nervously outside – to the kitchen to make coffee, eggs and toast, but also to survey the scene of my self-debauchery. Strangely to me (and, I barely need add, to my great relief) the yard looked and smelled unsullied. Even the molested chair (in the clear morning air, I blushed deep crimson) betrayed no signs, as if my excesses had merely added to its masculine patina. A sly thought arose: what if mine was not the only tale of lewd abandon the chair could tell? And what if Jack’s saying held true out here as well as in town? _‘What happens in Ringstead stays in Ringstead.’_ I giggled, suddenly full of silliness, and half-wishing for the impossible: a friend such a joke could be shared with.

I must clean the chair anyway. But, first, breakfast, and then the beach – for even here in the cottage clearing, the brilliant cerulean sky and warm sun already promised a long, beautiful day. And, buoyed by some shy swell of irrational optimism, I shaved, groomed and dressed for that day less carelessly than usual, though I knew that rock-scrambling, seaweed, shingle and salt would take their usual toll regardless: cream cotton bags, loose enough for comfortable walking, but well-fitting at the waist, and elsewhere, when hitched in, and a deep-blue cotton-jersey shirt. Half an hour or so later, with my usual beach kit packed into my knapsack – that is to say, canvas pumps, a towel, flask and rations, my sketchbook-cum-notebook, and fallback reading – today, from Harry’s library, Reid’s _The Garden God_ under plain brown cover, which (despite its notoriety) I doubted I would do more than flip through in idle curiosity – I set out thus attired onto the clifftop downs. Today, sweet reader, on foot and in hiking boots, in blessed respite from last night’s adventures.

I crossed the pale dry grasses of Ringstead Common to the main coastal path above the wide, shallow arc of the bay, and walked, at first, in my customary direction – away from Weymouth, towards the high chalky cliffs rising to the east – but then paused. Until now, I had delighted first in the famous geological attractions between here and Purbeck – Lulworth Cove, Durdle Door – before the lure and allure of the truly wild coast (and, I reflected now, a less admirable anti-plebeian snobbery) drew me to its obscurer, more secret spots where I could swim naked, be alone, and do as I pleased. But now – today – I hesitated, for while the pleasures of solitude and wild beauty still called me, their object had changed.

> _He will find you, and you him – I’m sure of it._

Surely Jack’s words last night had been no more than kindly sentiment! But, still, his prophecy had taken root in my hopeful heart, and now I had not a clue what to do about it – or indeed whether I should ‘do’ anything at all, lest my own actions should break the spell or break my heart. (How superstitious I had suddenly become!) For to find – or be found – is not to seek. I took courage from the fatalism of this last thought – as well I might, when I had no real clues to guide me to my beautiful boy. I allowed myself one rational advantage that happened to suit my own mood: today, I would break with my custom of venturing east towards Purbeck and stay closer to Ringstead and Weymouth.

Here, there was still unexplored drama to be found. I remembered now that Harry had mentioned a vertiginous smugglers’ path which dropped down from the nearby White Nothe headland – pronounced ‘Nose’, so-named because the chalk cliff was said to resemble the Duke of Wellington’s visage – to a rocky shore, and thence to a charming small beach where a tight ring of ancient strata encircled swimmable caves and sheltered sea. Harry’s rapt description had painted a prelapsarian idyll of dark glittering water, fine pale sand, and unselfconscious, artlessly naked, local boys. With Harry’s tastes, the Fall cannot have been far away – nor, I suspected, the shingle rather than sand that seemed typical in these parts. But even if the beach’s reality was more prosaic than his reverie, I was curious to see it for myself.

The smuggler’s path’s perilous reputation was well deserved. The sensation of being surrounded by nothing but sky and sea thrilled me at first, but it was not for the fainthearted – the drop was precariously steep. As I descended, so my gratitude for the dry weather and my stout boots and light load increased. Then, a good twenty feet above the shore, the path stopped short – mercifully, so did I! – and I saw a thing I had not seen before: hereon, the beach could only be reached by descending a very steep wooden ladder. I landed on the warm but deserted pebbly undercliff unscathed and in good shape, but praying there would be an easier way back.

The remainder of my walk to the cove of Harry’s daydreams exemplified the mysteries of our English coast. It looked five minutes on the map, but took half an hour on foot. Then, once reached, the pretty cove could only be entered by scrambling across rocks and occasional slippery rock-life – rugged enough to make one feel adventurous, but, in summer and fair weather, presenting no real dangers except at high tide.

And, on most points, Harry had not exaggerated. It really was beautiful, and a suntrap. In the just-after-midday sun, the almost-enclosed circle of sea shimmered and lapped a deep Prussian blue. The sand was no fantasy – though warm rocks, large smooth pebbles and a little shingle reasserted themselves away from the waterline – and there were pretty rock pools as well as the promised thrilling geology and small caves. But, in the Sunday sun, it seemed I was the only boy here – or man – or human visitor. I scanned for signs of fellow humans at rest or play – a bobbing head in the sea, a towel or garments spread on any of the rocks – but I could see no one. And, I realised, I was not displeased to have this place of beauty and warmth and dark sea all to myself. And so I chose my own rock to settle on – mid-way into the cove’s curve, with a scenic view of the coastal geology further out, well-placed for what looked the most intriguing caves and arches – took some refreshment, laid down my towel, and stripped to swim.

Even in the caves and holes that punctuated the rock crumples that defined the cove, the water was pleasantly mild, and the tide gentle enough to tread water and explore. After venturing briefly further through one cave into colder, fiercer sea towards a large, free-standing rock, I found it still pleasanter to return to the warmer waters at the centre of the cove and simply lie back, eyes half-closed – or half-open – paddling in circles. I must have been doing this for quite a while – luxuriating in sea and sun, lazily debating with myself whether to abandon my bathe to sketch, write or read – when I caught sight of something – or someone – new on the beach. I uprighted myself in the water, squinted, and saw, unmistakeably, a pale form spread out on a dark rock towards the cove’s western limits next to some of the pretty rock pools.

Cautiously, I swam into the shallows to observe as closely as I dared, scarcely wishing to be seen. I need not have worried: the figure was dead to my presence, and as I stopped – still submerged to my neck, but with my toes now brushing the seabed – I realised why. On the rock lay a boy, face down – or almost so – slumbering or dreaming in the sun. The first impression he made upon me – sun-hazed, yet vivid – was indeed impressionistic. His head appeared to me only as a dark mass of hair, resting on the pillow of his raised, folded arms. Below the head, the hair dwindled in a fine arrow into the nape of a slender neck. Below the neck, he was absolutely naked – and, to my eyes, absolutely beautiful.

I stilled myself in the water – and my breath more so – and willed the sleeping beauty not to wake, or not yet – oh, not yet. Mindful of last night’s events, I had the presence of mind – just about! – to look around me again too, but my recce reconfirmed the oddity that there were no other bathers here. Sweet reader, no doubt another question will be racing through your mind – as it was through mine – but, as yet, I could not discern the answer. All I knew was that the sight and presence of the boy on the beach was affecting me deeply, just as the hazel-eyed boy in the woods had affected me last night. Either I was fated this summer to fall in love at first sight with boys unknown, in the plural, or…

Whoever he was or was not, the slumberer’s posture made it impossible for me not to stare at him – like an aesthete starved of art – for he presented a view more voluptuous than any coastal landscape or rising wave. His strong shoulders and lithe upper back ebbed into a neat waist, then surged, with sensuous abandon, into the full mounds and tight gorge of his buttocks. Like myself, the boy was not heavily built – but, as he shifted and breathed, he exuded a healthy strength and suppleness as well as (did I hear?) occasional, reassuringly human, grunts and snores. Everything about him delighted me. As I drank him in, the thought occurred – not without a tinge of smugness – that I doubted Harry would ever have painted this boy. His beauty was too vernacular, too singular, to suit Harry’s style of clean-limbed availability, and his careless nudity somehow too self-possessed to please Harry’s collectors. I sensed – no: more vivid than that, I _saw_ – that, like Manet’s Olympia, this boy would wake to disconcertingly return the gaze of the devotees of such art.

I wondered now how best to exit the sea. In truth, my own viewpoint had become a little too pleasant. My view of the boy’s breathtaking rear – and glimpses of more, in the hair-shaded penumbra below – had made me blush burning hot. I felt ashamed of myself on his behalf, but to little effect: under cover of the water, he was exciting me considerably. How ridiculous I was becoming: gazing on the nakedness of an unknown boy while forgetting my own, and theorising my way to a fierce cockstand! In all, to return to my things on dry land while the sleeping beauty still slept (or seemed to) struck me as the sensible thing. And then after that? I had no idea – but one thing at a time. And so I sculled back to the middle of the cove – keeping the boy within my sights in case he should wake – before rising out of the water to reclaim my own rock. As I rose, I tried to present (I hoped) my rear view only to the boy’s vantage – for the distance between us was not immense, and even as I settled on the sun-warmed rock to rub myself dry I was still half-hard.

The same spirit of modesty – or sudden shyness – made me decide to cover myself, though the sun-warmth and (proliferating!) wild beauty made clothes feel like an imposition. Indolently, I wriggled back into my smalls – at least they might constrain my prick’s divagations – and the trousers, which I rolled up to just below the knee, and stopped at that so that I would be able to idle and paddle bare-chested…

And then I looked up, and saw that there was life and movement on the other rock.

> _Oh Lord._

The mere, prosaic sight of the boy awake and conscious (for what could be more ordinary?) was, it seemed, enough to freeze me and strike me dumb with terrible agonizing shyness. At the very moment when what I most needed was a dash of sailor Jack’s unquashable forwardness, my overwhelming feeling was that I would be happiest if I could crawl under a rock. Yet seize this moment I must. However much of a fool I was about to make of myself, I could not – _must_ not – let this boy who so bewitched me slip away.

I averted my gaze so that I could appraise him, and the situation, via the slightest of snatched glances. By now he was sitting – somewhat slouched, with his back resting against part of the rock, one leg bent up at the knee, the other sprawled. Like me, he had taken a modest step to restore his modesty: a towel now covered his nether regions. Also like me, he had brought reading with him – a football comic, or similar, lay on the rock – which he was not reading. Rather, it seemed he was still pulling himself out of his daydream or nap: he stretched his arms extravagantly above his head and yawned, with an unexpectedly deep timbre that first startled, then thrilled me. For all his boyishness, I had a further reason to know now that my heart’s desire was fully a man.

As his mouth closed, his eyes opened, widened – and acknowledged me for the first time. And, sweet reader, now that our eyes finally _could_ meet, my heart was galloping towards certainty that the yawning, stretching, deliciously rough-voiced vision in front of me was indeed the same beautiful hazel-eyed boy I had fallen so rapturously and strangely in love with last night. Of course, such beauty, and its hues, perfections and flaws, look different in the July sun from near-night – so that to see him here was indeed like falling in love twice. But once his bright eyes met mine, and once his face lit with a friendly smile – a smile _for me_ – I knew. Oh, now I knew – and, sweet reader, I was dizzy with it – yet still so horribly shy. If only I had a fraction of Jack’s brazenness to help me!

I managed, though, to hold my love’s gaze and smile back at him – not so hard, for his lopsided smile and the attentive tilt of his head were irresistible to me, though I feared I must look like a grinning, lovelorn idiot – and even to venture some words.

> ‘Hullo there!’ I called, raising my hand to my brow in a greeting salute. And, full of nerves, I stood up, and moved to break the distance between us.
> 
> ‘Hullo ter you too, sir!’ he cried. (I swooned inwardly again at his voice.) ‘It be a beau’ful day!’
> 
> ‘And such a really beautiful place,’ I said. ‘Do you come here often?’ I added helplessly –instantly cursing my tongue-tied banality and my class-exposing cadences. How stupid and stiff I must sound to this lovely boy who seemed so full of unaffected ease.
> 
> ‘Most Sundays int summer – or other times – do depend when I can ge’ away. But I do love it here. Beats church all right!’
> 
> ‘It certainly does!’

And in more ways than one, I thought mischievously. He had struck a chord: his cheerful, honest, heathen preference for the beach gave me courage, and relaxed me somehow, so that I laughed with him as freely as he had spoken.

> ‘And you, sir?’
> 
> ‘Oh, I’m here for the summer – but today’s my first time at this spot. I’d heard it would be quiet, but I didn’t expect…’

My words tailed off without finishing whatever I had meant to say, or not say. For even as we exchanged these pleasantries, things were turning queer between us. Throughout this whole exchange, our eyes had not broken their contact. And by the time he uttered ‘And you, sir?’, I had to control a shiver of pleasure – for I felt his eyes on my body, too, as surely as I had with Jack last night, but with none of Jack’s (bless him!) coquettish front. This boy looked me over with a guileless openness, as if this – like his naked loafing or my skinny-dipping – was as wholesome a way as any to spend Sunday. As the pleasurable shivers continued, I was glad I had part-dressed. Was it possible to bring off another boy with one’s eyes? I confined myself –– well, mostly – to gazing into his. But as I did so, his dark brows knitted, and something in his look altered: first to confusion, then to what seemed like panic

> **‘ _Shit!_ … No!’**

His words exploded from nowhere. Then, his beautiful eyes huge like a terrified faun, he leapt up from his rock in some disarray – snatching his towel to cover himself – and began to back away from me. In his haste, the football comic bellyflopped onto the beach – dislodging, as it fell, a copy of _Sandow’s Magazine_ the lad must have hidden inside it.

> ‘Stop!’ I cried. ‘Oh, please don’t go! Please! Whatever is the matter?’

I would wonder later – after – whether the only thing that got through to him and persuaded him not to run was that I must have sounded close to tears myself. It upset me so to see him upset – and worse that I did not know why – and how much worse that I seemed to be the cause.

The poor stricken lad was still looking at me terrified.

> ‘Please! I mean you no harm, I swear it. I’d rather die than hurt you. Please – oh, please stay – I can’t bear it…’

And so I blurted it out: all my feelings for him, raw, yet much concealed – for there was no ‘I love you’ or ‘I want you’ in my mad declaration (how could there be?) If I had ever imagined myself the smooth suitor or confident _erastes_ , my garbled utterances now made it painfully plain how far I fell short.

> ‘It’s — your eyes. I seen you before … some’ere ... Or you seen me, feels like. Feel so queer … I can’t…’ And then, the panic rose again in his voice.
> 
> ‘Sir, please don’t tell on me!’

I had good reason now to feel afraid and ashamed myself. But, somehow, I managed to stretch out my hand to him, as I had with Jack last night when I didn’t know what else to do.

> ‘Tell what? And to whom? I swear I wouldn’t even know.’

I continued to hold out my hand. I even smiled – for surely I was at as much risk as he – but mostly for the other reason.

> ‘ _Hrrumpff_ ’, he muttered, finally taking it, after some awkwardness with the towel.
> 
> ‘Look – you have my promise if I can have yours – what happens in Weymouth stays in Weymouth. Shake on it?’

The look of pure astonishment I had just brought to his face was beyond any price. But he shook on it, properly, and was able to look me in the eye again after.

> ‘Can we start over again?’ I asked. I hadn’t let go of his hand. ‘My name’s Tom.’
> 
> ‘Tom!’ He shook my hand again, painfully hard. ‘I’m Alby – from back over —’ He nodded his head in a westerly direction, across Ringstead Bay or beyond.
> 
> ‘Hullo Alby!’
> 
> ‘Hullo Tom!’
> 
> ‘Tell you what … why don’t you get yourself comfortable, and I’ll move across and join you? If that’s all right? Would you like that?’
> 
> ‘Aye, Tom, I would! You mean get my trews on?’ He chuckled.
> 
> ‘Well, only if you’d feel…’ I paused. ‘Alby, you’re a bigger lad than your towel.’

He flushed deep red, but then roared it away with a wide laugh.

> ‘Worr, hark at him! No more ’an you are, Tom!’

And now it was my turn to blush as red as he, right up to my ears.

To reclaim my composure, perhaps, I picked up Alby’s scattered magazines from the sand, and handed them back to him, with the contraband copy of _Sandow’s_ now prominent on top. ‘Don’t lose these, now.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The Garden God _(1905) is a Uranian early novel by the Belfast-born novelist, critic and translator Forrest Reid, a close friend of E. M. Forster: http://www.valancourtbooks.com/the-garden-god-1905.html If published today, it might be classified as gay young-adult fiction, but with pederastic undertones that would explain its appeal to Harry (the artist who has loaned Tom his summer cottage). In 1905, the novel disgusted Henry James so much that he severed all contact with Reid. I liked the idea of Tom picking it from Harry’s library as mawkishly lurid beach reading, but with slight disdain, not expecting to actually read it.__
> 
>  
> 
> _  
> _  
> _Sandow’s Magazine of Physical Culture _was established in 1898 by Eugen Sandow, the ‘father of modern bodybuilding’ and a huge celebrity in his day, famed for modelling his own physique on the proportions of classical Greek and Roman sculpture. It actually ceased publication in 1907, but I’ve ignored that detail so as to give Alby a real contemporary muscle mag to enjoy on the beach (or perhaps it’s a well-thumbed back issue, LoL).__  
>  _  
>  _  
>   
> 


	3. Pools, Pies and Holes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘“Steak but no oysters?” He looked at me with those sparkling hazel eyes, flecked with gold and the darkness of the reflected sea.’
> 
> Tom and Alby get along swimmingly over lunch on the beach, and we learn quite a lot about Alby.

> ‘Like some?’
> 
> He was decent now: buff canvas trews rolled up above the calves, topped by a whiteish half-sleeved vest – hastily tugged on over his shock of hair and burnt skin, and fetchingly unbuttoned at the throat. Braces dangled from his waist, bare feet dangled from his rock. I hovered hesitant, a bag of nerves at the prospect of settling next to him, and unsure how much distance to keep. Smiling up at me, but shy himself, he shoved forth a hand. In it was a crumple of waxed paper, and inside the paper was one – no, two – glorious slices of pie.
> 
> ‘I’d love some!’

My stomach gurgled unexpectedly. Until the pie’s appearance, I had had no idea that I was hungry – or not for food. I’d brought rations of my own, of course. But, faced now with the pie’s temptations – the burnished crust, the glistening clear salty jelly oozing from the tight-packed mosaic of light and dark meat – I felt outclassed – no, _embarrassed_ – and droolingly ravenous.

> ‘But I mustn’t rob you of your lunch,’ I added, good manners belatedly reasserting themselves. ‘Would you like to share some of mine? It’s nowhere near as splendid, but…’
> 
> ‘Cucumber sandwiches, hey?’ There was an amused twinkle in his voice.
> 
> ‘No! Sardines. Rolls. And an apple,’ I added, extraneously.

Like any confirmed bachelor (or so I flattered myself), this past month I had affected an absurd pride in living from tins. For some reason, the notion amused Alby no end.

> ‘Sardines!’ he chuckled. ‘Why, Tom, do yer not know ye-er in _Dar_ zet?’ – he pronounced the county name exactly as it looks on the phonetic postcards I had been disdaining all summer on my forays to the Post Office and store. ‘Darzet where we ’as real fish! Dressed crab an’ that. Shrimps an’ whelks! Cockles an’ mussels, too!’

Despite his teasing, his voice had the loveliest low burr. At the word ‘cockles’, I began to throb violently, and again felt relief that I too was dressed – if (thankfully!) not like the crab.

> ‘Well—’ Quite distracted by his voice, not to mention its all-too-palpable effect on me, I had no reply for this. I smiled. ‘I’m very happy to help you with the pie.’
> 
> ‘And I’ll help ye see off they sardines!’

Still proffering the pie while I rummaged awkwardly in my duffel for my own napkin-parcelled offering, he laughed again on seeing that the sardines were still in their tin and my cottage rolls unravaged.

> ‘Decent bread,’ he added, with a brisk nod. (I basked in this sudden crumb of his approval like a flower parched of rain!) ‘From George’s?’
> 
> I nodded back. ‘You mean the baker at Poxwell?’
> 
> ‘Aye. Or Poshwell, as we calls it. Come now – eat!’

I ate. The pie was every bit as delicious as it looked. With a delicacy that surprised me, Alby spread out my napkin on the warm rock, tore open the rolls with his thumbs, unlocked the tin, and adeptly decanted the sardines and their oil into the gaping, yielding bread without a spill. My spartan lunch looked suddenly tempting.

I tried to eat decorously, but the succulent pie and my deepening hunger must have betrayed me. ‘Plen’y more where that came from!’ Alby cried, passing across an open bottle of ginger pop.

> ‘Where _is_ the pie from? I’ve never tasted anything so moreish.’

Alby gestured again, as he had earlier, ‘back over’ the bay towards Weymouth.

> ‘Scudders Pies! By common consent the best around! Made over Osmington – by my Ma and kin, I should say; now ye’ll think me biased! – an’ sold all over Weymouth.’

He paused for a luxuriant mouthful, then washed it down with a swig of the pop. The food had closed the distance between us. We sat splayed on the warm rock – me _almost_ as casual as he, or striving to be – separated only by my picnic napkin, so that the drink and food were easily passed and shared back and forth. Delightfully close, in fact.

> ‘Now I think of it … I had a very fine pie in Weymouth last night. Steak.’

How strange it was now – here – in the calm shimmering cove in the company of this beautiful, unaffected, sunburnt boy – to recall last night’s oppressive dinner with my tiresome boor of a cousin. I felt as though a lifetime of sensual experience had surged through me since then. But my words were true: the pie had been the highlight of the bland meal.

> ‘Steak but no oysters?’ He looked at me with those sparkling hazel eyes, flecked with gold and the darkness of the reflected sea.
> 
> ‘No oysters.’
> 
> ‘Now then – let me guess – was you at The Ship?’
> 
> ‘I was! But how on earth did you…’
> 
> ‘Ma ran out when she wor making the last batch! As yer’ll know, there’s no R in the month—’ (in truth, I was so hypnotised by his loveliness, and distracted by the effort to appear not hypnotised, that I had quite forgotten) ‘—this time o’ year we use pickled oysters for the pies. But, this bein’ the first busy July weekend, Ma brought in help – this be how we work: whatever needs doin’, kin or mates pitch in – and the young ’uns, my cousins, were over-eager with the oysters, bless ’em. So as the last batch had none. And, Friday and Saturday both bein’ big business, Ma had to take a view on who – or where – should go oysterless. The whole village knows our pies – an’ most of the folk as buys pies in town, whether it be at the pier, stalls or public bars, love a briny oyster or few. But the toff establishments and hotels are another matter. Tom, you know how genteel folk – _some_ of them—’ (he jabbed a playful elbow towards my ribs) ‘—turn up their noses at anything with much of a taste?’ (I did.) ‘The upper-class dining rooms be the worst, and in Weymouth they don’t come stuffier than The Ship.’
> 
> ‘You can say that again! Especially on such a fine evening as last night. To tell you the truth, I was glad to get out of there for some fresh air.’

There was a pause, and Alby gave me a _look_ – and said, in a tone I could not quite read: ‘Were you, now?’ Luckily, he instantly resumed talking before I had a moment to wonder – or panic – about his meaning:

> ‘Anyroad … Ma reckoned no oysters would be missed at The Ship, and she reckoned correct!’
> 
> ‘I certainly didn’t miss them – but then I didn’t know there were supposed to be any!’
> 
> ‘There weren’t! We told The Ship the pies wor a “special”. Nothing underhand!’
> 
> ‘“We”?’

In friendly retaliation, I recaptured his gaze (with success, and with what delicious secret shivers) and shot him a wide-eyed look that (I hoped) signalled my curiosity to hear more. Much more – for, of course, my heart wanted to know every thing about Alby, while dreading the awkwardness of asking outright.

> ‘Me, tagging along with my blasted cousin – pardon my language – older cousin, that is.’
> 
> ‘What do you do, Alby? For work, I mean.’ (A boy of his age and class must already be some years out of school, I thought.)
> 
> ‘Well, as I say, at home whatever’s needed … this and that. But Saturdays – most Saturday nights in summer, sometimes other times – I help with the pie deliveries. We load up the pie-van, attach the horse, clip-clop into town and do the rounds. The best part is, we collect all the pie trays after. So on delivery nights I’m at leisure till the kitchens close (or later, depending on my cousin’s goings-on) – free to do as I please, with Weymouth my oyster! And with no cause for Ma to fret or Pa to wind hisself up over my whereabouts.’

_Weymouth my oyster_ indeed! His words conjured a sudden, vivid – but how rudely ill-timed – vision from last night. My throat tightened, parched with embarrassed lust. Luckily he continued through my silence.

> ‘And yerself, Tom?’
> 
> ‘Me? Oh.’
> 
> I swallowed, and laboured to recall anything other than the bosky, half-lit apparition of his lovely face and the full sweet curve of his mouth – no more than a fleeting impression in the fading light – glimmering wet as he sucked on the cock of a companion whose pleading, pleasured moans and very existence I preferred to forget.
> 
> ‘I’m a scholar,’ I stuttered, ‘at … I mean, student. In Dorset for the summer, then back to Oxford for my final year.’
> 
> ‘Oxford, eh.’ There was an unsurprised flatness in Alby’s voice which stung me – though I had no idea what I had expected instead. Had he sounded suitably overawed, I would have shrunk in well-bred humility. ‘What yer studying?’
> 
> ‘H–history.’

Yes, that must be the correct reply. Not ‘boys’, not this singular boy, not the mystery of his effect on me or the absurd hopes he had lit in my heart.

> ‘Oooh – interesting!’ And he sounded as though he meant it. ‘We got plenty of that round here.’
> 
> ‘I know.’ I had recovered enough to speak, and a muddle of words rushed out. ‘I love it here – the landscape and coast, I mean – the geology, the rocks and coves. Nature. Not history as it’s taught, but another kind of history that’s … inscribed in the land, you might say. And every bay or pool or rock form is unique; every day something new. I don’t know a place in England more wondrous than here. For a visitor, anyway! Living here, I suppose you must know the whole place like the back of your hand...’
> 
> ‘Well … not the _whole_ place, nor’s the _whole_ place a natural wonder – you been to Weymouth, so you know. Take Osmington, now’ – Alby gestured again back across the pale crescent of bay behind us, then stared back at me, _into_ me, with what felt like a sudden challenge. ‘You been Osmington?’
> 
> ‘N–not yet. Only the chalk horse,’ I added, in lame mitigation.
> 
> ‘Mad George’s dobbin! But most of Osmington proper be two miles down the lane from there, by the millstream as it heads towards the sea. It’s a pretty place – you should come, Tom – there’s orchards, fields, flowers – but, my point is, we’re a working village. There’s the mills, the forge … Uncle Bob the butcher (my Pa’s older brother) … other shops, three pubs… You’ll find me and my folk – and our pie kitchen – downstream near the millrace. And, would you believe, another pub by the sea, and a tea garden in among the orchards, very nice … and I’ve not yet mentioned the camp.’
> 
> ‘Camp?’
> 
> ‘Holiday camping site, in a big field down near the sea. With facilities!’
> 
> ‘The place must be absolutely teeming in summer!’
> 
> ‘Can get that way. And there’s times when I feel … when I get restless and … drawn to be elsewhere. To be mysel’ with no bother, and – what be that word? – sol-’ 
> 
> ‘Solitude?’

Alby nodded thoughtfully. He was looking directly into my eyes.

> ‘And ’specially, when I can, I come here. Tom, you called this place wondrous, and it is. The rocks and rockpools, all quiet but for the sounds of the sea … there’s few spots I love more ’n Bear Hole.’
> 
> ‘Bare _what_?’ I jolted in shock, followed by instant mortification at own sewer of a one-track mind.
> 
> ‘Come, Tom – you surely know these parts?’

Alby’s eyes twinkled, but the upward curve of his mouth remained gentle. If he thought I was an idiot he hid it well.

> ‘Not this little cove. Today’s my first time.’
> 
> ‘The Bear be that big dark rock out there with the shags brooding on top.’
> 
> Alby gestured at the monolith guarding the cove opening which I had noted during my earlier swim. I smiled at his word: ‘brooding’ summed up the prolific but graceless black birds.
> 
> ‘And a “hole” hereabouts be…’
> 
> ‘…any small swimming spot,’ I cut in. ‘The rockier and more hidden the better.’
> 
> ‘Quite so. Ye surely know Stair Hole?’
> 
> ‘Yes – of course – but if only that _was_ hidden! I had ... an experience there.’

I could again feel Alby’s eyes on me, curious – my body controlled itself enough to betray no response – followed, this time, by an unmistakeably dirty chortle.

> ‘Did you, now, Tom? If you tell, promise I won’t!’

And he held out his hand to shake mine, as I had stretched out mine to him earlier.

> ‘Nothing racy enough to shake on, I’m afraid,’ I said – accepting his hand into mine anyway, but with only the gentlest shake, more of a light squeeze. ‘I swam there – thought I was all alone, stripped right off. It was heaven. But then a charabanc full of amateur geologists rolled up! With binoculars, notebooks, cameras … most embarrassing.’

Alby threw back his head and fairly roared with laughter, so diverted that his hand crushed mine almost painfully hard instead of letting go.

> ‘Must ’a given them the thrill o’ their lives!’

Then his warm laugh died down, and I realised Alby had gone bright red. Awkwardly, he eased his grip – reclaimed his hand, even – and stared away into one of the rockpools, chin dropped, avoiding my gaze.

> ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t mean…’
> 
> ‘That’s all right,’ I said. Infected by his mirth, I had started to giggle myself, and now struggled to stop. A snort escaped me as my belly muscles tensed and quaked with silent laughter. ‘Sorry too … Alby … I don’t mean to...’

How I longed now to take his hand again in mine.

> ‘It’s just … Tom, yer quite something to behold. Has you never been told that? Very … striking.’

And now I felt my own blood rising and spreading from my ears to my cheeks and neck.

> ‘Why, thank you,’ I said, managing to sound far more composed than any part of me felt.
> 
> ‘Tom, fancy a bathe? There’s somethin’ it would please me to show you.’

**Author's Note:**

> This work extends my four-chapter original fic ‘Chestnut and Hazel’ (http://archiveofourown.org/works/11659542/chapters/26234970), which was written and posted as a gift for fennui (paperweight) in the Rare Male Slash Exchange 2017 (http://archiveofourown.org/collections/raremaleslashexchange2017). 
> 
> For occasional chapter notes, see the ends of individual chapters. :-)


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